[Haskell-cafe] Interesting new user perspective

[Iain Barnett]

On 10 Oct 2008, at 9:00 pm, Tommy M. McGuire wrote:

> Iain Barnett wrote:
>> On 9 Oct 2008, at 9:33 pm, Andrew Coppin wrote:
>>>  I think it's just the teaching of the language that needs work,  
>>> not so much the language itself.
>> As a newer user myself, I'd agree with this statement. I'd like to  
>> see far more mundane tasks solved in tutorials.
>
> I would agree as well.  My own flailings led to Software Tools in  
> Haskell[1], which taught me more about how to actually do things[2]  
> than the textbooks that I have read.

That looks like a really useful resource, thanks. I've just read the  
introduction and that is the same experience I've been having,  
(ending up with bits of programs and nothing really practical). I'm  
currently trying to write some simple games in Haskell, and learning  
a lot along the way.

>
>> Haskell is can obviously do some really interesting things, but  
>> constantly having wikipedia open so I can look up whatever  
>> mathematical doodah has just been mentioned can get draining. Even  
>> Real World Haskell suffers a bit from this.
>
> The mathematical doodahs are *very* useful, much more so than any  
> other language I have used, but it helps to have some kind of  
> foundation to understand how and why.  I am frequently reminded of  
> a "How to Draw" page from the Tick[3] comic, which went something  
> like:
>

Yep. They're certainly useful, it's just that explanation and  
knowledge aren't always the fastest route to understanding. Sometimes  
it's better just to get on with things and just do it - you don't  
learn how to drive by getting lessons on the combustion engine from a  
physicist :)


On 10 Oct 2008, at 9:50 pm, Don Stewart wrote:
>  Haskell makes
> constructing true parsers just as easy,
>

You're not speaking for me there! :)  I really like regex. It's a  
domain specific functional language, so why rewrite the wheel?

Iain